Thursday, May 2, 2013

I’m not necessarily in love with the design of these ads, or the Seamless identity with that awkward .com, but I think the writing is pretty sharp and well-targeted to their audience. I’m certain references to the urban lifestyle, as well as other online experiences, ring true to many people who encounter these ads.

Sh*tty

This competitor’s ad is flawed in so many ways. It’s half a premise: where’s the “There’s an easier way to get lunch” headline payoff? Next, the cut paper “illustration” is too obviously a Photoshop effect. Would it kill them to actually cut paper? Also, I can’t help but think those speech bubbles should be thought bubbles... hard to talk with scuba gear in your mouth, and, well, fish don’t talk. A minor quibble, but it irks me.Perhaps what irks me more about the fish talking is what it’s saying: S#!t.Seriously, what is that? S#!t? Would it have killed them to go with a conventional comic strip convention like a grawlix (i.e. @#$%&!)? No, instead they thinly veil their profanity with two alternate characters that look very much like their alphabetic counterparts, which sucks all the very-little-to-begin-with humor out of imagining just how vulgar this fish is. And sushi, after all, should be more like old-school Eddie Murphy: Raw.

The example is the ad... the illustration of the man in the water with the fish is intended to look like it's made of cut-up pieces of paper, collaged into the illustration you see. But it's not actually paper, it's just photoshopped to look like it was handmade. Check out Ivan Chermayeff's collages to see a similar, but authentic, technique, or the collage artwork of Henri Matisse. Or attend a second grade art class.